Here are some sites I use to compile books for my middle scholars:
- Real Learning Booklist
- Mater Amabilis
- Ambleside Online
- Sonlight Books Arranged by Well Trained Mind Chronological Cycle
- Parker Family LIst of Booklists — some of the links were broken when I last went there, but there are nice resources there. In fact, Beth’s whole site is really good if you are interested in a gentle, Charlotte-Masony classical education.
- Baldwin Project — books online based on both the Ambleside and Waldorf type curriculum.
- Reading Your Way Through History – Love2LearnMom’s ongoing project. There is a blog to add new suggestions.
My favorite approach is the clusters arranged loosely by themes, like Elizabeth’s reallearning booklist above. I helped her choose the books and put them in some sort of order, especially in the higher grades on the list.
When I used the list with my second son, then in sixth grade, I chose one book from the month to read aloud. The others were for independent reading, depending on his interest level. Then I would choose a “context” book — either a saint’s life or some other non-fiction book — to read alongside the fiction one. We had a spine reference book — the Kingfisher Encyclopedia of History — and he usually did a map and kept a timeline.
Sometimes I’d think of art projects, or language arts standards of learning, or poems to memorize along with the theme. But sometimes we just read the book and talked. I had an overriding theme for the year, something sufficiently vague like “the importance of the individual person in pivotal historical moments”.
IT was so much fun and I still refer to those books when we’re studying something now — it gave him some “pegs” to hang other things on in future.
